


and i hold the world in my embrace

by millepertuis



Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Canon Relationships, Cluster Feels (Sense8), Gen, Long-Distance Relationship, Multi, Post-Canon, Sharing a Body, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-23 15:04:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17685758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millepertuis/pseuds/millepertuis
Summary: hernando: why am i waking up to a wall of texts about sailor moonamanita: because rajan and mun have good taste that's why





	and i hold the world in my embrace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kalirush](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalirush/gifts).



> title from the South Pacific musical song, _Younger Than Springtime_
> 
> it was such a pleasure to play with all these characters again. i hope you like this!

 

 

 

> hernando: why am i waking up to a wall of texts about sailor moon  
>    
>  amanita: because rajan and mun have good taste that’s why

 

 

Amanita drops her phone onto the mattress and Nomi shuts her eyes tighter, trying to burrow under her pillow. The bed shifts with Amanita as she wraps herself around Nomi like an octopus, her arms enveloping Nomi back into her embrace, her face nestling against Nomi’s neck, her leg hitched over Nomi’s hip. Every point of contact a wonder. Here, in the pocket of warmth of their bed, so close to Amanita—Nomi never wants to wake up.

Amanita rubs her cheek against Nomi’s. “Come on, lazy,” she says. “I’ll make pancakes.”

“Mm. With strawberries?” Nomi mumbles.

“Have we got any in the fridge?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“You got it. Only the best for my wife,” Amanita says, smacking a loud kiss to the side of her head. Wife. The word still pulls a smile from Nomi’s lips. She doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to it.

 

“Bug’s driving you to your interview?” Amanita asks while Nomi presses a couple of oranges into fresh juice.

“Yeah.” Nomi yawns. “Picking me up at seven.”

“Did you get your mic fixed?”

“He’s loaning me one for today.” She puts their glasses down and slumps into her chair. She yawns again. “You’re opening up the bookstore?”

“Bright and early.” Amanita leaves the pan to soak in the sink and brings back heaping plates of pancakes. She sets them down with a satisfied nod. “Some of my best work, if I say so myself.”

“Strawberry pancakes?” Lito asks, popping up.

“No. Go away and take your hangover with you.”

“Lito?” Amanita guesses.

“Hello, Amanita.”

“Hello. What’s up?”

He sighs, slouching over their kitchen table. “Mornings are so hard.”

“He’s hungover and he doesn’t like mornings,” Nomi tells Amanita.

“Sun’s a morning person. Let’s put her in charge of mornings from now on.”

“I’m a morning person,” Sun agrees. “I’m not an eight mornings person.”

“Hey, I’m a morning person,” Nomi says blearily.

Amanita snorts. “I love you, but that’s a bold-faced lie, honey.”

“Hey, Nomi,” Will says. “I have a computer question.”

Nomi groans and lets her head drop down and bump against the table.

 

 

 

Capheus tries to take the calming breaths Sun taught him. It’s not quite working.

“You’re not still nervous, are you?” Lito props his head on Capheus’s shoulder to look at the crowd behind the curtain.

Zakia is outside, with his mother and Jela. Capheus tears his eyes away from them and lets the curtain fall back. “I’m fine,” he says. He goes to grab some water, puts it back down without drinking, walks back to the curtain, stops, goes the other way, stops, starts again.

Lito watches him pace, holding a glass of Daniela’s hangover cure. He takes a sip. They both make a face.

Capheus rubs at his neck. “I’m not nervous about the speech. I’m nervous about—the one after that,” he tells Lito. He slips his hand into his pocket, just to check. The metal is still warm. He hasn’t stopped thumbing over the ring since he put it there.

“No cure for that.” Lito gives another look outside. “Ah, I think you’re on.”

“Okay. Okay.” Capheus takes in a breath. “Come with me?” he asks.

Lito clasps his shoulder with a grin. “Come on, you don’t need me.”

Capheus grins back at him. “I always need you,” he says, and they walk out to the crowd together.

 

 

 

> rajan: we’re having lunch with our parents tomorrow  
>    
>  rajan: a bit nervous  
>    
>  zakia: why are you nervous?  
>    
>  hernando: you’re bringing wolfgang?  
>    
>  daniela: oh right how do you explain wolfgang to people?  
>    
>  daniela: here’s our ex-mobster german boyfriend?  
>    
>  amanita: forget about wolfgang, how do you explain FELIX

 

 

 

Sun wakes from uneasy dreams to a cold bed. She sighs into her pillow and slips out of bed.

There is a little flicker of warmth in the back of her mind. Sun and Riley fall into step for a few seconds, walking down a hallway in Seoul, in Chicago. Their hands brush together, then they part.

There is tea waiting for Sun in the kitchen, the cup still hot.

There is a text from Hernando on her phone, _good luck for today_ , and one from Zakia: _thinking about you_.

It’s only a few minutes before she hears the front door open and the pitter-patter of little paws running across the floor. She bends down to give scratches to her dog, and smiles at Mun when he comes in.

“Hey.” She tilts her head up for a kiss and he obliges. “Good morning. I walked the dog.” She pulls him back down for another kiss. He smiles into her mouth. “I’ll be late.”

“So?”

“I’m already taking the afternoon off.”

“You don’t have to,” she reminds him.

“I know. I want to.” He kisses the tip of her nose. “Court at two?” he checks.

She nods.

“See you then, Ms. Bak.”

They share one last kiss before he leaves and Sun goes back to her tea.

They can only pass each other by most mornings, and Sun is often in back-to-back meetings all day long, now that she’s taken back her company, but it’s alright. They’ll see each other this afternoon, and they’ll see each other tonight.

They’ll see each other every day.

 

 

 

“Shh, shh, Kala, you’re alright, it’s alright, you’re home—”

Kala startles awake and struggles to make sense of anything, still half-caught in the dream, cold fear running down her spine.

“Kala, are you alright?” she hears, and she knows that voice, it’s her husband’s voice, Rajan’s voice, she’s home, she’s not still trapped in—

“Kala,” Will says, his hand covering Rajan’s on her shoulder. “It’s not your nightmare.”

“It’s Wolfgang,” she gasps to Rajan, and rolls over to reach for Wolfgang’s still form beside her; she doesn’t dare to brush her mind against his and risk being pulled back into his mind. Her hands catch his shoulders. “Wolfgang,” she calls as she gives him a shake. Her arms feel weak from sleep and fear. Rajan has gotten out of bed and gotten back in on Wolfgang’s other side.  He touches Wolfgang’s face gently.

Kala draws strength from the ghost warmth of that touch and shakes Wolfgang again. “Wolfgang, wake up.”

He wakes with a start, his hands raising up reflexively to where they’re touching him. Kala lets him catch her hand and leans down to kiss his knuckles. “Hey,” Rajan says, stroking the soft skin under Wolfgang’s eye. “There you are.”

Wolfgang shuts his eyes tight and tries to smile, but he can’t hide from Kala, and he can’t hide well enough from Rajan either. “It’s alright,” Kala tells him as Rajan lies down and holds Wolfgang to him. “You’re here now, you’re safe, you’re with us.”

She lies down too, and presses her forehead to Wolfgang’s, presses her mind to his. He shudders in their arms, and she reaches for Capheus, or he for her, and they stroke Wolfgang’s hair and sing to him the songs their mother sung to lull them back to sleep as a child, until Wolfgang’s heart slows and his fears recedes.

All the while Rajan holds onto them both, onto them all.

 

 

 

> zakia: check-in, is everyone alright?  
>    
>  daniela: yes  
>    
>  hernando: we’re worried but yes  
>    
>  mun: at work but can step away for a call if any1 needs to talk  
>    
>  amanita: how are they?  
>    
>    
>  rajan: we'll get there

 

 

 

Will brushes his thumb over the lines between Riley’s eyebrows. “He’ll be alright,” he tells her.

“I know,” she says. They can feel Sun keeping watch over his dreams; his awareness of her, even in sleep. He won’t have any more nightmares today.

Riley takes his hand and looks back at the table besieged with color samples. “We’ll have to eat dinner on the floor if we don’t pick something soon.”

Will shrugs. “You pick. What do you want?”

“Something happy. Something bright.”

“Yellow?”

“Lito doesn’t like yellow much.”

“He likes yellow fine.”

“Not if you’re going to splash it all over the walls,” Lito protests.

“Well, we’re not asking you.”

“I own an eighth of that kitchen wall.”

“Do you? Do you really?”

“Capheus likes yellow,” Sun says.

“Well, there you go.”

“What do you like, Sun?”

Sun surveys the samples. “Blue’s nice,” she says.

“Just paint it rainbow and be done with it,” Nomi says, not looking up from her laptop.

Will looks at Riley and raises his eyebrows. “How about it?”

She giggles. “It’d be very bright! Too bright, probably.”

He looks over the room. He’s spent so many years alone in that cramped kitchen. He’d never known it could make room for seven people. He’d never known he could.

Yrsa called love within a cluster narcissistic. But what he feels when he looks at Riley… How could he not love her? How could he not love all of them, their hearts closer to him than his own?

“What about just one wall?” he says. “One rainbow wall, and we can paint the others white. It’ll match your hair.”

“I like that idea,” Riley says, squeezing his hand.

Sun hums. “Vertical stripes. So we can see all the colors.”

They look at Lito. “Sure,” he says. “I can always go for rainbow.”

“You know, the first flag had eight colors,” Nomi tells them.

Riley smiles. “One for each of us.” She’s seeing it in her mind already, the bright colors, how it will look in the spring, in summer when they can open the window and let in the light.

It looks beautiful. It looks like home.

 

 

 

Lito heaves out a sigh. It’s the third time in as many minutes. “Something wrong?” Kala prompts him as she adjusts her microscope’s focus.

“Not really,” he says. He peers into the experiments Kala keeps on the backburner—literally. She twitches as she overcomes the urge to lecture him about safety procedures. She can’t really make him wear eye protection.

Kala turns back to her sample.

Lito sighs again.

Sun, sitting cross-legged in a corner with her eyes closed, shifts minutely.

“Alright!” Kala carefully puts away the slide, then turns around to glare at Lito. “What is it!”

“Nothing,” he says dejectedly.

“Lito!”

“I’m bored!”

“Be bored elsewhere!”

Lito leaves with a huff. Kala throws herself in her chair and holds her head in her hands. “I’m sorry,” she says. Lito sends a benevolent tickle down her side but doesn’t come back.

Sun gets up from from her corner and starts stretching. “I like your mind when you’re working,” she says. “It’s quiet.” She comes to Kala’s side and nudges her head up to look into her eyes. “It’s not so quiet today.”

Kala crumbles.

“I just—I wish I could help him.”

“You do.”

“I know it’s just a nightmare. I know he’s happy, most of the time. I know we all have bad days. I just—”

“You wish you could go back in time and protect the boy he was then. So do I.”

Kala rests her forehead against Sun’s stomach. “Yeah,” she whispers.

Sun strokes her hair. “Healing takes time, for all of us. And anger—it’s hard to let go of. But he’ll be alright. He has you, and he has Rajan, and he has all of us. He’ll be alright.”

 

“Ms. Bak?”

She picks up her head, already smiling. “Detective.”

Mun is at the door of her office.

“I’m here if you need me,” Kala tells her. She squeezes Sun’s hand and steps back into her lab.

Sun closes her laptop and gathers her things. “I didn’t know you were picking me up.”

“I wasn’t sure if I could make it in time.”

She grabs her purse and walks to him, walks into his arms. He closes them around her and kisses the side of her head.

“Tell me it’s going to be okay,” she says.

“It is.”

“Tell me we’ll break Soo-Jin out if we have to.”

“We’ll break her out if we have to.”

“We’ve done it before,” Will tells her.

“I still have a backdoor into their network,” Nomi tells them.

Soo-Jin’s case isn’t going to be as easy as Min-Jung’s was. There are still fingers to point, there always are—failure of the law, failure of the state, failure of duty of care. It’s just a matter of getting enough people to look at where you’re pointing.

They deserve better.

Wolfgang sets his hand on her shoulder. “We’ll make sure they get it.”

She lets herself relax in Mun’s embrace, in her cluster’s resolve, for one minute. Then one more.

“Come on,” she tells Mun eventually. “We’ll be late.”

 

 

 

> amanita: whats up ssterices  
>    
>  amanita: sisyerwives  
>    
>  hernando: *sisterwives  
>    
>  amanita: thnk you!  
>    
>  amanita: thank uou  
>    
>  zakia: *thank you  
>    
>  amanita: FU KCING

 

 

 

Hernando joins Lito on their terrace, careful not to spill his cup of coffee as he settles next to him. “Hey,” he says. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

“Today’s Valentine’s Day?” Lito panics. “It can’t be Valentine’s Day! I’m not ready for today! I’m ready for tomorrow!”

Hernando’s eyes twinkle at him. “It’s midnight in Seoul.”

“Oh, Hernando,” Lito complains with a relieved sigh, holding his hand to his forehead. Then the loveliness of the gesture hits him and he says it again, in a different tone: “Oh, Hernando.”

They trade soft kisses until Hernando shivers and pulls back, closing his robe more tightly. “You’re not cold?”

 _What cold, I grew up in Iceland_ , Lito almost says without thinking. “It’s not very cold,” he says instead.

“I guess not,” Hernando agrees, rubbing his knuckles over Lito’s back.

Lito’s always loved Hernando in the morning—his gravelly voice, his easy tactility, the arch of his wrist as he sips his coffee; just the fact of him here, with Lito; that they get to have this, to be this.

It’s everything Lito has ever wanted.

“You’re up early again. Is something wrong?”

Lito hesitates before speaking. “No. Nothing at all.”

“Ah,” Hernando says, and blows on his cup of coffee. “And that’s the problem, isn’t it?”

“No problem. I’m good. I don’t want to change anything in my life. Well, I’d like more roles. And I really should talk with Nomi about her alarm. It really hurts my ears, Hernando.”

“But you’re happy?”

“Yeah, I am.” Lito looks down at his hands, startled, as he sometimes is, not to find them slighter or darker; he often traces the edge of calluses he doesn’t have.

“You’ve gone through some rather big changes, these last couple of years,” Hernando says carefully. “And you’ve been through a lot. It’s normal to have some trouble adjusting. I still have a moment of cognitive dissonance when you chat with our Korean neighbors.”

“It’s just…” Lito sighs heavily and leans into Hernando. “It’s all over now, isn’t it? I don’t have to hide anymore, and I don’t have to fight, and I don’t know what comes next.”

“Oh, my love,” Hernando says. “Now we live. Now we just live.”

Lito looks at Hernando hopefully. “That easy?” he asks.

Hernando laughs. “Never that,” he says. “But isn’t it worth it?”

 

 

 

“Ah, there you are,” Rajan says as he steps out into the garden.

Wolfgang rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah. I was just taking in some air.”

“They’re a bit overwhelming,” Rajan admits sheepishly.

They are, a little. Wolfgang prepared himself for meeting Kala and Rajan’s parents. He prepared himself for meeting their siblings and cousins and their siblings’ and cousins’ children. He prepared himself for more of the wide-eyed side looks and scrupulous politeness that Daya had shown when Kala introduced them, before she learned to laugh at him. He prepared himself for confusion or judgement or coldness.

He wasn’t prepared for how _loud_ it was, to cram so many people under one roof, all laughing and arguing and talking over one another. He wasn’t prepared for how warm it was.

Kala’s and Rajan’s families don’t really know what to do with him, but Wolfgang doesn’t know what to do with them either. He supposes they’ll all have to learn together.

Rajan’s fingers graze his shoulder. “Wolfgang, are you… Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” he answers, knee-jerk.

Rajan’s face falls a little.

“Hey, no, come on, what did I say?”

Rajan shakes his head. “No, it’s alright. We don’t have to talk about it. You’ve got seven people who know what’s going on inside your mind without you saying anything, and it’s—it’s Kala you love. I can’t really do anything for you.”

“Don’t—don’t think that, alright? I—”

Wolfgang hesitates.

“Don’t make a dirty joke,” Nomi tells him.

“Be honest,” Kala tells him.

Lito is looking at Rajan, at his slumped shoulders and bent head. “He thinks he’s alone,” he says.

“Alright.” Wolfgang braces himself. “I do—love you.”

“You do?”

“I do!”

“Because Kala loves me, and you feel what she feels?”

“Because Kala loves you,” Wolfgang agrees, “and also… because of _you_ , because of how you are, and how you look at me, and how you touch me. Because of how _you_ —just you—make _me_ feel—just me.”

“Really?” Rajan asks, dipping his head with a grin.

“Really,” Wolfgang says, and tilts Rajan’s head back up to kiss him.

It’s not the first time they kiss without Kala there to bridge them together; it makes something flutter in Wolfgang’s chest anyway.

“I’ve been, I had a pretty rough time, when I was a kid,” Wolfgang finds himself saying when they draw apart. Rajan watches him with soft eyes. “I guess sometimes I still struggle with it.”

Rajan leans his forehead against Wolfgang’s, his hand so warm at the back of Wolfgang’s neck, Kala’s love so warm at the back of his mind.

“It’s alright,” Rajan says. “We’re here for you, whenever you need.”

 

 

 

> daniela: [picture of a distracted lito missing his glass and pouring water over his hand instead]  
>    
>  daniela: fess up which one of you’s having filthy sex somewhere  
>    
>  amanita: not it  
>    
>  rajan: not it  
>    
>  mun: [picture of an overburdened desk]  
>    
>  mun: :(  
>    
>  hernando: [picture of a leaning stack of copies to mark]  
>    
>  hernando: :( too  
>    
>  zakia: capheus wanted to watch die hard and apparently kala’s never seen it?  
>    
>  daniela: te serviré una copa de vino cuando vuelves  
>    
>  daniela: ohhh  
>    
>  zakia: i’m pretty sure they’re all here  
>    
>  rajan: and they didn’t invite us?  
>    
>  mun: i want to watch die hard too  
>    
>  amanita: fuck those guys! we’ll have our own movie night and they’re not invited  
>    
>  amanita: you don’t need fancy brain connections to watch a movie all at the same time, there are apps for that

 

 

 

“Oh, gross.” Daniela balls up a sheet of paper and throws it in the general direction of the bin. “I’m three pages in and already two women have gotten gored in a vaguely sexual way, hard pass.”

“It’s all women getting gruesomely murdered,” Lito complains, kicking up his feet in Hernando’s lap. “Find new material!” Hernando placidly keeps reading.

Daniela picks up another script. “You didn’t say how it went with the Dandekar-Rasals.”

“Eh, pretty alright. Kala and Wolfgang and Rajan are happy, anyway.”

“That’s good, then. Oh!” She snaps her head up and pokes Lito in the hip with her toes. “Gimme Wolfgang or Kala!”

Lito bats away her foot. “I’m not a phone operator!”

“But I need to ask them to ask Rajan about his recipe for the dessert they brought to their parents’! It looked absolutely _divine_ on Instagram.”

“Why don’t you just ask him yourself on your super exclusive group chat I’m not invited to?”

Hernando pats his ankle. “You’re still not invited,” he tells Lito without looking up from his book.

“I _could_ ,” Daniela says, “but my phone’s all the way over there.”

“Well, they’re still sleeping, so you’ll just have to wait.”

“What use are you then,” she complains good-naturedly, getting back to her script.

Lito goes to refill his glass of wine and top up theirs, then settles back into the couch, occasionally reading over Hernando’s shoulder.

“This one looks pretty good,” Daniela says some time later. “There’s a note from the director, too. Says she’s a big fan. Here, Hernando, read this scene. He’s gotta do it.”

Hernando puts down his book and takes the script. Lito watches his face while he reads for a minute or two before he gets impatient. “What’s it about?”

“Well, it’s kind of a weird sci-fi plot, but there’s a bunch of other stuff thrown in, too. The main character’s this complete loner type who gets tangled with a ragtag band of outcasts and gets dragged into a government conspiracy, and all the while he’s dealing with his feelings for this hot—”

“Love,” Hernando says. “It’s about love.”

“Yeah.” Daniela smiles. “It’s about love.”

 

 

 

“You’ve got—” Riley leans in and rubs her thumb over the dot of white paint on Will’s jaw. “There.”

“You’ve just made it a whole lot worse, haven’t you?”

She looks at the smudge she left on his skin and laughs. “Maybe.”

He shakes his head. “Still sure this is what you want to be doing on Valentine’s Day? Not much romance here, apart from Amanita’s playlist.”

She looks around the room. It doesn’t look like much, floor and furniture covered in plastic, and only half a wall painted white. Diego’s going to stop by later in the morning with a contractor friend who’s going to help them paint the stripes of colors around the kitchen cabinets and appliances.

Frank Sinatra is singing about love and Riley wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

“What’s more romantic than spending the day making our home together better?”

“You sap,” he teases her. He plucks a rose from its vase—one of the roses he gave her this morning, not one of the ones she gave him—and checks for thorns before he tucks it behind her ear.

“Takes one to know one,” she teases him back, sliding their fingers together.

Will tugs on her hand to draw her into his arms. “Younger than springtime, are you,” he croons along Sinatra as they sway, lovely and so very off-key.

Riley buries her smile in Will’s shoulder, and in San Francisco, Nomi stops kissing Amanita to pull up the song on her phone. “Come on,” she says, wobblingly getting to her feet. “Dance with me.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Amanita tells her, but she takes Nomi’s hand and stands with her on their bed, their feet sinking into the mattress.

And Capheus meets Zakia’s eyes in the mirror as she applies her make-up and grins at her. “Dance with me?” he asks.

She laughs. “Now?”

He nods and gets up from the edge of the bathtub. He puts down her make-up box and takes her free hand in his to place it on his shoulder.

Zakia laughs again. “There’s barely any room to stand,” she protests, but she puts down eyeliner and slips her hand in Capheus’s.

The song ends and switches to another. They keep dancing, faster, closer; the boundaries between them thinner.

And Kala and Wolfgang stop walking in a busy Mumbai street and pull a puzzled Rajan back in between them to dance.

And Lito swallows his mouthful of toast and jumps to his feet.

“Family, we’re having a moment,” he announces, and urges Hernando and Daniela to their feet.

And Sun blocks Mun’s kick with a sweaty hand and keeps hold of his leg. “Detective,” she says, “may I have this dance?”

He wipes sweat out of his eyes. “I thought that’s what we were already doing.”

_Keep the fires burning, keep the fires burning—_

They throw their arms in the air and jump along to the beat with Daniela and Hernando. They almost fall off the bed over and over, holding Amanita by the hip to keep themselves up as she holds onto them. Will twirls Riley, and Capheus’s delighted laugh bursts out of their chest; Sun dips them with a grin, and then Mun does, Zakia shouting out the lyrics with them—

_Keep the fires burning, keep the fires burning—_

_Keep them burning hot—_

Nomi pulls Amanita, pulls them all closer—

Lito nosing along Hernando’s shoulder—

Riley’s head in the crook of Kala’s neck, Wolfgang’s head in the crook of Will’s—

Rajan’s hands around them—

 

And Capheus lets himself step out of the moment, the world narrowing down to Zakia in his arms. He turns his head to press a kiss to her palm.

“I like you so much. I love you, too, but I like you so very much,” she says, eyes still sparkling, stealing the words out of his mouth, the breath out of his lungs.

“Now?” Riley asks, exhilarated, and Capheus had a plan, Capheus has dinner reservations and a speech he can’t remember and yes, now.

“I love you,” he says, and the rest falls from his lips. “I know I come with a lot of—baggage. I’m probably more than you ever expected. More than you ever looked for. Maybe I’ve got no right to ask you to share your life with someone who’s also seven other people. Not when I know I can’t ever separate myself from them. Not when I don’t want to. They make me more than what I am, as you make me more. They’re the best part of me.”

“You’re the best part of us, too,” Will says quietly.

Zakia reaches up to hold his head in her hands, tears in her eyes. “You’re exactly right, Capheus. You were always just exactly right.”

He reaches for his suit pocket, trembling. Sun helps him steady his hands as he pulls out the ring and offers it to Zakia, and then she draws back, they all draw back until only he and Zakia are left.

“Maybe I’ve got no right, but I’m asking anyway. Zakia, I’ll love you all of my life. Be my wife. Let me be your husband.”

Zakia looks down at the ring for a moment that stretches forever. “Capheus, I… I love you so very much. I want to share my life with you. But I’m not sure… I don’t know if I want marriage. I don’t know if I want the institution that comes with it.” He reaches to wipe a tear from the corner of her eye, and she leans into his touch. “I’ll love you all of my life, too. I want to be with you all of my life. Is that enough?”

Smiling is an effort sometimes, to Capheus, but never around Zakia.

“Of course,” Capheus tells her, and smiles, looking into her beloved eyes. “Of course it is. More than.”

 

 

 

“I got my clocks!” Amanita exclaims from the floor as she opens up her package.

Nomi saves her draft before she looks up from her screen. “Your what?”

“You know, my clocks? Didn’t I tell you I was ordering them last week?”

“There was a fundamental misunderstanding in that conversation, but go on.”

“So I can keep track of all your brainmates’s timezones.”

“Brainmates?”

“Trademark pending. Doesn’t work?”

“I think I’m legally obligated to support you in all your endeavors and vocabulary excursions.”

“I like the sound of that.” Amanita pushes herself up to drop a kiss to Nomi’s mouth, then drops back down to keep unwrapping her clocks. She keeps up chatter as she works, telling Nomi about her plans to decorate them.

“Is it ever too much?” Nomi hears herself ask.

“What is?”

Nomi looks down at her hands. She’s been thinking about what Capheus said to Zakia. “I’m kind of always eight people. There’s not really an off-switch.”

Amanita snaps her head up and reaches for Nomi’s hands. “No, hey, I know that. I love having more of you to love, even the part of you that’s an overdramatic soap opera star or the one that’s a white Chicago cop." Nomi laughs, drawing a smile from Amanita. “I wouldn’t change a hair on your head, or any of theirs. Well, Will _could_ do with a better haircut, but—”

“Okay, I’m protesting that one.”

“He’s protesting that one,” Nomi passes on.

“That’s his right.”

Amanita searches Nomi’s eyes then gets up. “Here, come on. I wanted to keep it a surprise, but Valentine’s Day is as good a time as any, right?”

She leads Nomi to their room, sits her on the bed then goes dig in her closet. She brings back a box to their bed and drops it in Nomi’s lap as she sits next to her. She nudges Nomi with her elbow. “Come on, open it.”

Nomi does.

The first few photographs are familiar: a picture from the surprise party Bug had thrown Amanita for her birthday two years before; a gap-toothed Amanita being held up by two of her dads to put an angel on top of their Christmas tree; Nomi’s first day out at the beach after her last surgery; a strip of pictures from a photobooth in the early days of their relationship; Nomi and Amanita at their wedding.

There are dozens more underneath. She knows most of them, too, even if she’s never seen them. Riley in between her parents on a piano bench. Mun and Sun at that first competition. Lito and Dani and Hernando in São Paulo. A young Capheus held on Shiro’s lap. Kala and Rajan at their wedding. Will and Diego at their graduation. Sun and her mother. Magnus. Two blond boys playing in a park. Capheus and Zakia, the night he was elected.

Amanita and Nomi with Lito and Hernando outside the Museo Frida Kahlo last fall. Kala and Nomi and Sun and Riley sticking out their tongues at Amanita behind the camera. Mun and Rajan and Wolfgang asleep on the floor at the airport, cuddled up together in between two flights. Capheus and Kala and Nomi with matching milk mustaches in a Parisian café. All eight of them at the wedding reception; then all eight of them with all their people, all gathered together for the very first time.

“I love you so much,” Nomi says.

“Oh, baby, don’t cry.” Amanita cups Nomi’s face in her hands and helps her dry her tears. “I just thought it might be nice to hang them all up together,” she says. “This is our home, after all. I want it to be home to all of you.”

“It already is,” they tell her. “You make it home.”

They look down at the photographs in their lap: all their lives, all their loves, all their families. There’s so much of it—eight people’s worth.

There’s so much more yet to come; so much more to experience together.

 

 

 

> zakia: happy valentine’s day my loves  
>    
>  mun: ♥♥♥  
>    
>  hernando: happy valentine’s day  
>    
>  dani: happy valentine’s!  
>    
>  rajan: love you guys  
>    
>  amanita: happy valentine’s day  
>    
>  amanita: here’s to many more

 

 

 

“Can’t sleep?” Riley asks.

Wolfgang cranes his neck, and finds her curled up on the armchair in the corner, drawing on a sketchpad. He lays his head back down on Kala’s shoulder. “I’m fine,” he says. “It happens.”

She hums. She keeps drawing in silence.

“I should be over it,” he says eventually, talking about his father, talking about his uncle, talking about Whispers. Talking about holding Kala in his arms and feeling her slip away from him, from all of them. “I’m happy now.”

“I know you are. I can feel it, remember? And you deserve to be.”

He swallows. “Yeah.”

“You do. It’s alright if you don’t quite feel it, yet. We’re all struggling. What we’ve gone through, what we’ve all gone through, to be where we are today—pain and fear and anger, and grief…” She shrugs. “They leave a mark. But love… Love leaves a mark, too.” She picks up her head and stares into space. Wolfgang stretches his mind but can’t find anything of note. Amanita and Nomi are hanging the pictures on the wall in their bedroom. Kala is dreaming that she has eight heads and sixteen arms. “Here, come with me,” Riley tells him, putting down her sketchpad on her kitchen table and walking to his bed. “Sun’s rising.”

He takes her outstretched hand and she tugs him out of bed and onto a rooftop.

Sun is sitting on the edge of the roof, overlooking the city, wrapped up in a scarf and an old frayed sweater Mun’s had since college. Riley goes to sit next to her; Wolfgang follows.

“What are we doing?” he asks.

Sun rubs her gloved hands together and points to the horizon. “Watching the sunrise.”

The sky is still dark, but rays of sunlight are peaking over the skyline. Birds chirp each other good morning, and from here they can hear the distant sounds of traffic, of the city gearing up for the new day. The whole world is waking up.

“Isn’t this nice?” Riley asks him.

Snowflakes are falling from the sky, but Wolfgang only feels warmth—the warmth of the dog laying his head in Sun’s lap; the warmth of Kala and Rajan wrapped around him in their bed, in their home; the warmth of seven other minds in his, of seven other hearts beating in his chest as one. _Isn’t it worth it?_

“Yeah,” he says. “It is.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> please don't hesitate to correct my spanish, i’m working from my googling skills and my relative experience with some romance languages, and i’m particularly not too sure about the tenses i used


End file.
